I recently got interested in Ainu and I'm going over the lessons from Radio Sapporo Ainu Lessons. Well, I was interested before as well but now my Japanese is sufficient to go through the lessons without causing me headache.

They broadcast about 50 lessons, once a week, and go back to the bare beginner's level. They have had many runs and the lessons improved over time, making them easily accessible and not too daunting.

I'm listening to the current run, but I might consider translating the lessons from the last run (as they're finished) broadcasted from April 2006 to March 2007, 52 lessons in total. The reason is that the last run is a lot more focused on the grammar while the current run is more communicative (which is not necessarily bad, but the chance of speaking Ainu is negligible, especially outside of Hokkaido).

Anyone interested in learning Ainu or helping the translation? There's no point doing that for nobody's sake.

Last edited by Karavinka on 2007-08-08, 15:05, edited 1 time in total.

Hmm, I've been interested in Ainu for quite a long time (actually since reading some children's books which were set in prehistoric Japan ), but I've never found any materials in English or any other language that would be accessible to me.
So, translations of lessons would be greatly appreciated.

1. Copyright. The lessons are copyrighted by the Sapporo TV, but I think the usage of the lessons here is justifiable as 1) this is not a commercial website nor I make any profit from it, and 2) this is to promote Ainu learning among the non-Japanese who are interested in the language yet unable to find any courseworks.
2. I have altered much of the explanatory materials as the original materials are geared towards the Japanese speakers. English speakers need a different explanation for the same grammatical concepts, and I will continue this way rather than translating words by words. Should there be any error, it is my own fault.

Ainu ク is a sound that does not exist in Japanese, simply final -k instead of normal Japanese Katakana pronunciation of -ku. Although these Ainu Katakana are included in the Unicode, they are not as small as they are supposed to be and hard to distinguish. Here, I just used a smaller font size for these special Katakana. (The original lesson marks these with an asterisk.) The lesson spends a fair amount of time with these pronunciations as they are alien to the Japanese speakers, but they would not be a problem for those who can read this lesson in English.

For those who do not know Katakana, you can simply stick to the Roman alphabet. Roman Ainu is fairly phonetic, but note c (as in "acapo") is pronounced similar to ch in "church". But it would be helpful to learn Katakana as well as both Roman and Katakana are used to write Ainu.

Japanese proper names may remain in Japanese Kanji even in Ainu when it is written in Katakana.

Unlike Japanese or English which make distinction between, 降る・降った / falls・fell, Ainu makes no distinction of this kind. Instead, Ainu specifies the time frame with the words referring to the past such as ukran, numan.

Notes on Pronunciation

Ainu Katakana ム is not fully pronounced like normal Katakana ム (mu), but just a -m sound. Again, this would not be difficult for English speakers.

I copied "the answers" from the lesson page, and there seems to be an error there. Yes, "this year" should be tanpa.

The original Japanese lessons are by no means perfect. It stopped marking Ainu Katakana from lesson 2, and I've been marking them based on the pronunciation (and the discussions) I hear and Roman Ainu version. Also, there were certain typographic errors in Ainu texts that I corrected.

Before the translation:
I received the e-mail from Mr. Minehiro Sugamu, the producer of STV who is in charge of the Ainu lessons, that it is okay to translate and post the lessons. This first online Ainu lessons in English were made possible thanks to everyone in the station.

Sneachta wrote:Is it true that only 15 people speak this language today?

Most Ainu speakers learned Ainu as a second language, and the estimation of the number of the actual speakers varies greatly. The number '15' that Ethnologue gives is probably the native speakers existed in 1996.

But Ainu has been (and still is) going through an active revitalisation process since then, and the number of the speakers increased greatly. (I suppose still in thousands, but there's no concrete statistics.)

Ainu preffix ku= works as a personal pronoun, and -kor here is a verb that works as "to have, to bear something." The phrase "Ku=kor ..." is "... that I have", which translates as "my..." This is another way of saying possession in Ainu.

As it is explained in the last lesson, simple ku= is used to express possessions of the bodily part, as in "ku=pake", "my head." "Ku=kor pake" is not an idiomatic Ainu usage.

Personal pronouns must be marked in Ainu in all times, unlike Japanese and some others where the personal pronoun may be omitted. The word we're given here, ku, is the same ku as in "my.." and it is placed before the verb or noun. Thus it is called "personal prefix."

Although this hasn't been specified in the original lesson, note that the adverbs like poronno and the words that mark the time phrase (today, yesterday..) are placed before the personal prefix and the verb.

Pronunciation

Pay attention to the small ッ. Although this exists in the standard Katakana set, it is still hard for most Japanese to pronounce as it never appears in the word ending. However, it does in Ainu.

サッ sat To dry
クッ kut Belt
アペソコッ apesokot Hearth, fireplace

Many place names in Hokkaido that end with ~別 ~betsu come from Ainu ペッ pet, meaning "river."

The personal prefix ku is never pronounced separated from the verb. Pronounce it as if it were one word. And the accent is always placed in the second syllable.

Also there are many words that are essential in modern life that just don't exist in Ainu. Japanese makes a heavy use of the foreign loanwords (gairaigo) to solve this problem such as バス(basu: bus), インターネット(intanetto, internet), ラジオ(rajio, radio) and such words can be used the same way in Ainu as well.

Practice Sentences

1. I have("hold") a lot of money.
2. I drink a little bit of hot water.

映画 eiga is a Japanese word, and thus written in Kanji. There are many words from Japanese, and they may still be written in Kanji.

ヌカル nukar may be pronounced as ヌカラ nukara as well.

Grammar

In this lesson ~カネ アン ~kane an is used to make a continuous sense, but it can be ~コル アン ~kor an or its shorter form ~コラン ~koran depending on the area. The latter forms may be used in Samani (様似) area as well, ~kane an is more common. This lesson focuses on this dialect.

Another word ミチ mici means father as well, but a dead father. But there are regions where two words are used interchangeably. And aca may mean an "uncle" in many regions as well.

"Mother" is less complex, it is ハポ hapo in most areas of Hokkaido, including Samani.

Pronunciation

It is commonly said that Ainu has no voiced consonants, but in fact it has. In Samani, the word for mother hapo is often pronounced as habo.

Voiced/Voiceless do matter in Japanese, as it can change the meaning: kaki (persimmon) and kagi (key) are different words. These are free variants in Ainu, meaning that it doesn't change the meaning. Ruyanpe (rain) can be ruyanbe, hunpe (whale) can be hunbe, etc. k/g, t/d, p/b are the common allophones in Ainu.

How one should pronounce a word depends on the individual habit and the region, but the most accepted pronunciation is to pronounce them voiceless, and it is advised for the learners to pronounce them voiceless.

Ainu is grammatically similar with Japanese in many aspects, but there are notable differences. Using different verbs to mark the plural is one of it.

A Japanese sentence "魚がいる" (sakana ga iru, "there is/are fish") may mean there is one fish or more. Ainu makes this differenciation from using plurals not on the noun, but the verb. If there were only one fish, the Ainu verb would be an, if two or more, the verb would be okay.

But not all Ainu verbs have distinct plural forms, such as シノッ sinot "to play, have fun" applies to both singular and plural subjects. And while Japanese has two different verbs "to exist, to be there", such as いる iru for animate subjects and ある aru for the inanimate subjects, Ainu makes no distinction between them.

カネ kane from the last lesson can be used as kane an and kane okay to make the continuous sense of these verbs.

Another notable feature is that the subject can be omitted in both Ainu and Japanese. The original lesson does not mention this, but it should be noted for non-Japanese speakers. There has to be some subject in English such as "it" or "there", but this is not necessary in Ainu.

Pronunciation

As it has been emphasised in the previous lessons, Ainu accent falls on the second syllable. It is suma, not suma.